In The Valley of Gods: A Personal Journey mittarji:
it`s taken me a while to respond to this, but what a lovely travelogue you`ve shared with us--thank you! Having spent some time in Murree myself, i couldn`t help but think of it when you were describing the upper mall and the lower mall. It`s the only hill station i`ve visited in Pakistan, but i`ve wanted to visit Shimla for a long time, and from what you`ve described, i`d still like to. :-)

Good advice for Pakistanis veeresh,
really...is this the best advice you could give us pakistanis????!!!!
[Drink once. Drink twice. Drink thrice. Repeat exactly each time. Pretend you are Phil Collins and sing Paradise, Another Day, In. Drink more times if you can count till then. At the end of the whole lot, you will be a very successful and happy man and may have to call a cab driven by a serial murderer who takes pity on you, to go home.]
--yaar, what about us being very successful and happy women???? Believe you me there are some of us Pakistani femmes who`d drink this concoction as well....and live to tell the tale!!!! :-)
letting the good times roll,
ana

Mummy Guzzlers United `. . .Not because I want him to be more secure or intelligent than others, which in our society is like condemning them to social and emotional Siberia. . .`
haaN, soooo true! and i second Ansari on that.

i had previously read this in tft and was hoping it would get here. wonderful observations as always. . .

hasn`t felt much like spring.

The Other Arabia Ferzoo,
finally, I read this! enjoyed this travelogue! i think we should have a mini Chowk reunion in Dubai!!! ;-) hangama hi hangama.
lovely descriptions....i`ve only been within the Dubai airport en route to PK or back to the US, but from what Dawood says, Dubai appears to be a transit lounge in itself.
lve. ana

Random Musing hmmm. . . let me just muse some more about this.

The Late Eid Present rozaiba:
awwww. honesty is the best policy afterall. :-) After all little rozy went through, i should hope he would get to keep the money! ;-)

In Praise of A Government Enterprise stukamaestro: go to the socio-cultural (or whatever the hell it`s called) unplugged. i`ve put in the link for the new punjabiyat thread in the `I lost my Punjabi mela` topic. The first one was put to rest by most if not all of us...over a thousand posts!
agli vari tikker :-)

Baghdad Lullaby II rsax:
some of us DO care about the shias who do get blown to bits in Pakistan, and the sunnis and the ahmedis and the christians and the women and children and all the innocent ones, minority or not....i could go on, but since you seem to have it in for us pakis anyways, i don`t see how my input would make any difference :-)

Bina: you`ve echoed questions i`ve been asking ever since this bloody mess began. thank you.

In Praise of A Government Enterprise mittarji....
now i want to read more about the rest of your journeying. i know you gave us at the punjabiyat site some updates from time to time...perhaps you could use those in the more `personal` repput temporal suggests.

i, too, have been fascinated by trains...however when i lived in pakistan i can recall very few train journeys we made. my earliest memory is travelling from lahore to khanewal my very first christmas in pakistan..which was in 1970. from khanewal we went by tonga on the dirt road to my mother`s village. I don`t remember the train ride so much as the tonga ride because i loved tongas as well. the train journey i recall more vividly is the one we made, on one of our brief visits to pakistan after we had emigrated. again, it was from lahore to khanewal...we sat in a car filled with women with covered heads who stared at us uncovered females. It was rather uncomfortable, not very clean, and very little privacy. and this time my maamoo and cousin-brother picked us up in a rented car and we drove on the much improved road to the village. The journey back was somewhat better, although there was some confusion with the reservation and we didn`t think we`d be able to return that day. we did manage to get three seats for ammi, my sister and myself and we did not have to sit in a `for women only` car.
i would love to travel via train through India when i am able to do that. and have gotten some great pointers here. thank you for sharing part of your travels with us. :-)

The Children Under the Tree aamir...
this is by far one of your best :-) and i hope that there are more bests to come.
~~ana

The Unreality of War PM,
interesting article. I`ve been discussing this very thing amongst friends of mine, and some of us believe that too much is being shown on television (and then there`s ammi who comments on how we`re not being told everything--`ello!! this is the media afterall). but definitely, whether this is seen by some as infotainment, or by myself as just too much to deal with, I would definitely consider the merits of regulation. When the parents of some of the soldiers themselves are talking about how scary it is to watch and hear about their children in a particular division, one`s got to wonder...
regards,
ana

A Chance Remark {Compare this to the Catholics. On almost every feast day, in Italy, Spain and Latin America, they take out the Virgin Mary and Jesus in procession. At least the Protestants reformed Christianity out of a lot of these crazy observances and made it into a respectable religion. When the people of the Protestant nations such as America or England visit Catholic countries, they now view the processions as quaint; after all there is no public display of blood and gore, human or animal, so it is okay to indulge the simple-minded Catholics in their processionals.}
----hmmm. hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.
of course this is all based on a subjective, and as samina and perhaps sadna have even referred to a lofty position, so i wonder whether it even matters if i say something to the contrary here or not.
Today, in most/all Orthodox Churches, there were processions carrying the icons of Jesus, Mary and various saints who were either martyrs for the faith, or led exemplary Christian lives. Now for iconoclasts (which includes former protestants like me) this would come across as `quaint ritual`, but as a former Protestant, I think it`s rather sad that such processions and feast days have been taken out of their churches. I think that feast days of St. Patrick and other saints are a reminder of how much courage it took for these people to affirm their Christian faith when they knew the consequences that would follow. I don`t know much about Catholic feast days, although some of them are probably similar to the Orthodox (given it was all one in the beginning), but I also don`t believe the writer knows all that much about Christianity to say that the Protestants made it respectable. Having a procession on Good Friday, or Pascha--the day of Christ`s resurrection, or to venerate the cross He was crucified on doesn`t make a religion any less respectable.
just my two cents worth.

Twilight Freedom Farzoo,
finally i make it here after what seems like weeks. this particular `-ism` like a lot of `-isms` is a tough one to grapple with and i`ve done my share of grappling. As I was reading this, I couldn`t help but think of Mr. and Mrs. 55, woh yaad hay na, the awful role Lalita Pawar took on of being the `feminist`.
In the end, as you yourself ask, does it really matter? The lesbians think feminism should mean something, the marxists something completely different, the western feminists more often than not have tried to impose something they call a `universal ideology` on women in Asia and Africa. Feminists have male partners and children, others may want to, but their independence turns many men off....kya kaha jaye? In the final analysis, it doesn`t matter whether you are a feminist or not...what matters i guess is how you`ve lived your life, what you`ve stood up for (or against), more encompassing than limiting. Am I not a feminist because I oppose abortion? I would hope that`s not the case, but like I said, I`ve grappled with this issue a long long time.
am tired and not making any sense...but lovely to read you as always!
love,
a pseudo feminist.

Calculate This This article, or much of it was also published in mid-day, where i read it first. it usually says that at the end of your articles, but doesn`t here...khair....i already commented on this article in part...but since have gotten no answer...have decided response is futile.
are Baber and Saniya back in Lahore now?

Let There be Light... really enjoyed it, although can`t relate to it (and probably won`t :-) ).
and i love shalgham gosht!
--ana